I went to put away the picture, but stopped and looked at it one more time: the four of us, my father’s arm around my shoulders, my mother beside me and my brother beside her with that stupid smirk on his face—why couldn’t that boy ever smile? With everything that happened all the time—school and my father’s job and swimming and sports and friends—it was as though there was never time for all four of us to be together. In fact, that photo marked the last time we’d all stood still in one place long enough to have a picture taken. And now…

I put the picture back in my wallet. I didn’t have time to stand still.

—

The closer to the beach I got, the more people I saw. Most of them were locals. Some of them were pushing wheelbarrows or carts or carrying heavy loads on their backs. I didn’t ask, but I thought I knew. Whatever they carted was everything they had. These were the few scavenged remains of the lives they had been living.

Up ahead I caught my first glimpse of the water. From what Steve had told me I knew I just had to keep to the right when I came to the roadway along the ocean. The resort would be in that direction. I was pretty sure I’d even recognize the intersection, because we’d traveled this way. It was the route we always took when we drove along the coast to go sightseeing inland.

I stopped on a little hill overlooking the scene below. Something was wrong. This wasn’t the intersection I knew. There should have been dozens of little shops and roadside stalls all along that intersection, as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t see anything. That meant I didn’t know where I was or how far I still had to go or…I looked harder. There was nothing except debris. Along with flattened trees, logs, and branches, I saw boards and siding and galvanized tin scattered around…all the things that would make up those little wooden stores. This was the intersection I knew, it was just that everything I remembered was gone.

I continued along the road, down the hill toward the ocean. The scene was beyond words. What had once been a thriving, living, vibrant place was almost completely gone. There were a few people poking through the rubble, searching for something or someone. On the road there were a couple of bicycles and a smattering of people, moving slowly, trying to get through and over the wreckage that overran the road. Patches of black asphalt were visible, but the road was almost buried in sand. It was as if the beach had overrun the road, and I guess, in some ways, it had. The ocean had exchanged stores and trees for sand. Sand and boats. Scattered among the snapped-off trees, on their sides or simply sitting perfectly upright, were fishing boats. The ocean had brought them up onto the land and then left them behind when the water had finally receded. They looked like toys left on the beach by some giant kid who’d tired of playing with them.